In 1943, a 17-year-old Don Reno received a job offer from Bill Monroe and turned it down to enlist in the Army, eventually serving with Merrill’s Marauders in the jungles of Burma. This episode follows the Carolina farm kid who borrowed a guitar at age five, played radio with the Morris Brothers at 13 and Arthur Smith at 14, and came home from the war to find audiences telling him he sounded like Earl Scruggs.

The hosts explain how that comparison drove Reno to engineer the single-string Reno style with double stops, double-time picking and triple pull-offs, and how he simultaneously pioneered flatpicking guitar, teaching a young Hank Garland, composing Country Boy Rock and Roll, and earning Doc Watson’s credit as the first person he heard play fiddle tunes on guitar. They cover his 1948 stint with the Bluegrass Boys, 14 years with Red Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups, songs like I’m Using My Bible for a Roadmap, his work with Bill Harrell, the Good Old Boys and his sons, the recording of Feudin’ Banjos with Arthur Smith, his death in 1984 at age 58, and his inductions into the IBMA Hall of Honor and the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame.

• Why a rising radio star walked away from Bill Monroe’s band for World War II
• How frustration at being compared to Earl Scruggs produced the Reno style
• Reno’s role as a foundational flatpicking guitarist and mentor to Hank Garland
• The Reno and Smiley partnership and its enduring bluegrass gospel hits
• How military discipline shaped a virtuoso who served the song